


Remember?

by unsettled



Category: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 04:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wishes it had actually happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Remember?

The red queen and the white are trying to get along for once, and though Stayne thinks it's the stupidest idea, doomed to failure, he's here in the white queens court. He's not sure if he's supposed to be spying or acting the peacemaker, but so far he's not been required to do anything as the red queen's representative except show up to court, where he is politely laughed at. He feels even more awkward and ungainly among these crowds of delicate white creations, and he's sick of mocking eyes and half hidden smiles. At least in the red queen's court they were open about their mockery and dislike of one another. Any one of these people would sell each other to save their skins; the only difference is that here they won't even admit it to themselves.

It has been over a month of pointless, mind numbing small talk and appearances, and Stayne has just about had it. There's a garden he likes that no one seems to visit, probably because it's full of half dead plants. He thinks it might be an ingredients garden for the queen, but no one has chased him out, so he sits among things that look as twisted as he feels, and longs for rooms that are shades of red and black.

He's barely holding his own against the wave of homesickness when he hears an approaching footstep. He stiffens, and fights the urge to wipe a hand across his face; he knows he wasn't so far gone as to actually cry, and it would look suspicious. Stayne glances up, and the stark light of day is dimmed by the man before him. "Hallo," the man says.

He's seen him before, this man, who lights up the world around him. They call him Hatter, which can't be his real name, and all can gather is that he used to be more involved in court than he is now. They suggest some sickness, but it's laced with a combination of amusement and fear in each mention. Hatter doesn't look particularly ill, but then, Stayne hardly knows what a normal look for him is. "Hallo," he responds.

The hatter smiles at him, and speaks, his voice just touched with the faintest hint of an accent. "I couldn't help noticing. You looked rather, well, rather odd. Unhappy, unusual, uncertain… I was wonder if you were unwell."

Stayne catches the careful cutting off of words, in the manner of someone who fears they've said too much. He should be cautious, but he finds his mouth opening, the words spilling out even as his mind shouts warnings. "No, I'm just… I was just, um, well, homesick for a moment. It's… they've nothing in similar, you see?"

The hatter looks dismayed, and exclaims "Why ever didn't you tell me? Surely we could have found something to distract you."

Stayne is floundering. "Tell you? I… why would I tell you?"

Those flecked eyes widen even more, impossibly so. "Why, because that's what friends do. Unburden their troubles to each other."

Stayne thinks he has been hit over the head. This man is mad. He laughs, and is shocked at how bitter it is. "I don't have any friends." Not here, not at home, not ever. It is a realization he wishes he hadn't acknowledged.

"Don't speak nonsense. After all, I am your friend."

"What?" Stayne draws a breath, "No, you're not." And the other man has the effrontery to look offended. "How can we possibly be friends? I've barely met you. I don't even know your name!"

"Tarrant."

"What?"

"Tarrant. My name. Although you do know it, for you called me by it just the other day." He smiles. "Which is nice, actually. Everyone else has gotten into the habit of calling me Hatter, and while that is what I do, it is hardly who I am." He seems to finally register the expression on Stayne's face, and falters for the first time. "Do… do you not remember? It was just the other day…"

Stayne can only shake his head. The other day he spent alone, drifting from his room to the court to the dining room and back to his room, no detours, no encounters with red haired gentlemen.

"But, but it was right here! You were sitting on the other side of this very bench! Don't you remember? It was right after the queen told us about the caterpillar's newest prediction. You looked terribly upset, and left so quickly, I just came right after, and you looked up at me and said 'I fear the world is changing faster than we can adapt to it.' And I sat beside you and told you that we have always changed fast than the world around us, so you need have no fear."

Stayne is shaking his head continuously now. It never happened. He knows it didn't. He understands the tone of comments about Tarrant now; he really is mad.

Tarrant is looking at him like something horrible has happened, like someone has died, like the color has faded from the world as it faded from his face. He seizes Stayne's hand and tugs, and Stayne lets himself be pulled to his feet. He towers over the other man, but Tarrant seems used to it. "Here," he says, leading him over to the bent limbed trees at the far corner. "Do you remember these?"

He listens to Tarrant's story, about not knowing the names of the tress and making them up, creating progressively sillier names until they had both fallen over with laughter, and had called them by those names ever since. He listens, and doesn't remember any of it. Tarrant watches him, a furrow between his flaming feathers of eyebrows, and grows frantic when Stayne shakes his head again. He pulls Stayne towards the entrance of the garden, and into the hall. He stops, here, here, here, and every time there is a story, a story of something they did, or said, and Stayne finds himself wishing they were true. He wants to live in a world where they hid behind a pillar and mocked the identical dresses of two ladies determined to ignore each other. He wants to have told Tarrant that he was a genius of hat makers, the last one left of any worth. He wants to look at white marble walls and remember them covered with paint, remember Tarrant covered in smears of blue and red and green, grinning and laughing.

He lets Tarrant lead him about for the rest of the day, lets himself sink into the stories, inhabit the spaces that Tarrant creates. It is indulgent to let himself believe that these people he describes exist, that this funny, clever, wicked, mischievous version of himself, actually exists somewhere, in some other place. He knows this, and he knows that it cannot last, and he shakes his head every time Tarrant asks, "Don't you remember this?"

Tarrant exhausts himself eventually, and plops down on the grass of the castle lawn. "Come down," he says, and Stayne lays down beside him. It is almost full dark by now, the stars merest flickerings in the sky. Tarrant rolls to face him, lips perilously close to Stayne's ear, and whispers, his voice suddenly husky, "You don't remember this?" and turns into him, their lips meeting and melding, and it is utterly maddening that this is not real, here and now. They part, and Tarrant is a blazing comet against the darkening sky. Stayne knows this is not real, knows he could never have someone like this, but he will do anything to erase the desperate expression on that face, to wipe any hint of sadness out of those eyes.

"Yes," he says, against lips that have been telling him who he is all day. "I remember this."


End file.
